https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/141569 Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:13:47 GMT 2026-04-15T14:13:47Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/141642 Title: Mediterranean Journal of Migration : volume 2 : issue 1 Authors: Grech, Helen; Ragonesi, Isabelle; Pisani, Maria; Azzopardi, Rose Marie; Markova, Denitsa Abstract: The Mediterranean Journal of Migration is a multidisciplinary refereed open-access online journal with a special focus on migration in the Mediterranean region. The Journal is published by the Platform for Migration, based within the University of Malta. The University of Malta Platform for Migration was set up to offer a dialogical space in which researchers from different academic disciplines can work towards understanding all the evolving aspects of international migration, with a focus on the Mediterranean region, with a view towards contributing to an equitable, more sustainable and more inclusive society. Accordingly, the Mediterranean Journal of Migration aims to facilitate the dissemination of academic research related to migration. The journal is interested in accepting submissions which are research-based, including reviews of relevant literature grounded in empirical research, and theoretical contributions (i.e., conceptual models, frameworks, etc.). Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/141642 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/141631 Title: Foreword [Mediterranean Journal of Migration] Authors: Grech, Helen Abstract: Welcome to the second volume of the Mediterranean Journal for Migration. As migration scholars, we analyse, problematise, and critique the discourses, narratives, and imaginaries surrounding migration, as produced by states and other actors, and in this instance, we focus on research related to migration and the Mediterranean. Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/141631 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/141617 Title: Editorial [Mediterranean Journal of Migration] Authors: Pisani, Maria Abstract: The Mediterranean remains a site of profound contradictions, where the politics of inclusion and exclusion, belonging and disposable lives are laid bare. In this historical moment, the sea is a frontier of violence, where the rhetoric of human rights meets the might of border control, all too often with deadly ramifications. Barely making a single headline, the humanitarian crisis continues to unfold across the Mediterranean waters, where policies of deterrence and control are inscribed onto the bodies of those who are forced to move under conditions not of their choosing. In this sense, the Mediterranean Sea is a political project - one that reproduces racialised hierarchies of humanity through its practices of surveillance, detention, and denial. Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/141617 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/141616 Title: The crisis of migration : a policy crisis? Authors: Vella, Mary Grace Abstract: This paper addresses the gap between policy development theory and practice by attempting to analyse and explain the humanitarian crisis of migration across the Mediterranean through a policy crisis. It posits migration as a ‘wicked problem’ which cannot simply be addressed through the traditional linear policy cycle model, which infers a direct link between policy and practice, where policy outcomes directly result from policy objectives. Through a critical appraisal of the policy development process, the paper examines the processes through which the traditional positivist theoretical model of policy development and its claims of effectiveness, efficiency, feasibility, transparency, and evidence-based rationality are despoiled by a policy crisis for the humanitarian migration crisis. This policy crisis is simultaneously characteristic of and characterised by a problematic problem definition, a dichotomy between policy and implementation, and inauthentic evidence-based practice. It is manifested by piecemeal crisis intervention, policy contradictions, and processes of both politicisation and depoliticisation, which compound the migration crisis on both the micro-individual and macro-structural level. This policy crisis underpinned by fragmentation, incongruencies and contradictions suggests more than just a discrepancy between theory and practice, demanding a critical examination of the problem and solution, a re-evaluation of the policy cycle model with its claims of objectivity, cognisance of vested interests, and subversion of the neoliberal agenda which puts profit before people and the economy over well-being and fundamental rights and freedoms. It also demands reappropriation of the theoretical, administrative, yet intrinsically political nature of policymaking in the acknowledgement that only genuine political commitment can offer a glimpse of hope for addressing the humanitarian crisis of migration by closing the gap between policy and practice. Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/141616 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z